Huntly Half Marathon

I haven't been able set aside time to write a blog entry here in a while - work has been uncharacteristically full-on and I've had a few other things on my plate. Unfortunately blogging is near the bottom of my list of priorities so it's the first to be dropped when time is really tight.

Huntly Half Marathon

About 14km in, looking serious

So I ran my second half marathon last Sunday. I devised a training program with a sole focus on running to span the 5 weeks from my last triathlon to the half marathon. My main goal was to improve my run-specific endurance so that I could maintain a relatively fast pace for the full 21.1km. I started with a 44km week, built to 60km/week. I was cautious about avoiding injury (although I did break the 10%/week rule), and ended up cutting the distance down in my second to last week when my legs were telling me they'd had enough.

My original goal for the race was to go sub 1:40 - having run a 1:47 at my first half marathon. My run pace in the Olympic triathlon (sub 4:30/km) and the pace I was able to hit on mid-distance training runs made me think I might be able to get close to 4:30/km pace for the race, which would be 1:35. It seemed a bit ridiculous because to me that kind of time is getting into the realm of "good" runners (and is faster than my 5K pace was in December).

Finish chute

The first couple of km's of the race I was running about 4:15 pace and told myself to calm down and slow down. As each successive km marker went past, I found I was managing to hold a sub 4:30 pace without feeling like I was pushing particularly hard. About 14km in I decided if I was still feeling good I'd pick up the pace at 16km. I actually started gradually picking up and by the time the 16km marker went by I was pushing a decent pace and passing a lot of people. The last km I picked up further and actually approached my 5k pace, to finish with a time of 1:31:04. Unfortunately the organisers later announced they had screwed up their calculations on the measurement wheel, and the whole course was 600m short! They adjusted times for the additional distance and mine was 1:33:57 - still a time that I'm immensely proud of.

I actually wonder if I would've gone faster if the course had been marked correctly - the slightly short km's meant I thought I was running faster than I was, and forced myself to slow down a bit. I also wonder how things would've gone if I hadn't been wearing a stopwatch and monitoring my pace, and had just run to RPE.

Going through the GPS data I recorded (with more accurate distance), I ended up running a decent negative split - first half (only 10.25km) was 46:31 and second half was 44:33. In fact I did the final 10km in 43:37 which is about 4:20/km pace and a 10km PB for me. So now I have a new goal (which I wont be testing until near the end of the year) - sub 1:30. Requires a 4:15 pace but I think I'll be capable of that after a winter of marathon training.

O'Hagans
I've run the O'Hagans 5k every week since early April - I had posted earlier about how I was consistently dropping my times. Two days after the Oly I managed a 19:22, but since then I haven't come close. The following week was 19:5x and then the last three weeks I've run either 19:38 or 19:39. I can't decide if this is due to fatigue (my initial guess, but during my taper before the half marathon I didn't get any faster) or if it just reflects the change in the intensity of my training. I also won a $100 bar tab as a spot prize at one of the races...that went down well :)

Five Fingers
I tried to incorporate a short run in the VFFs each week, usually 4 or 5km. I really enjoy running in them, I think perhaps over the next few weeks where I don't have any specific events to be training for, I might get out in them more and build my distance in them further. Actually since it took me so long to finish this post, I ran the final O'Hagan's run of the series yesterday in my VFFs. Found them to be a little slippery in a couple of spots (it was raining), and my calves felt alright at the end (sore today though). My time was 5 seconds slower than my last runs in the Kinvaras, which is better than I expected to do in them.

Other Stuff
I've done very little riding and no swimming for the last month or so, have done a bit of mountain biking and think I might try get out and do that more regularly over winter.

Song of the Day
Nearly forgot. Bit different from my last few, Sound Check (Gravity) by Gorillaz from their first (self titled) album

PBs, Always Satisfying

Yesterday I ran in the O'Hagans 5K, which I believe I've mentioned in previous posts, and happily managed to maintain my previous record of PBing the 5K every time I run one. My 5K PB record has progressed as follows:
Nov: 22:30 (training run)
Dec: 21:43 (training)
Jan: 21:00 (first 5km race, bit of a hill)
Feb: 20:57 (same race as previous, eased off on the final hill to keep heart rate down = error)
later in Feb: 20:05 (O'Hagans, flat course, possibly up to 30 seconds short)
Mar: 19:51 (O'Hagans)
Apr: 19:27 (yesterday)

I was amazed at how much I was able to pull off my last time. Although the previous two 5Ks I'd run had been during low-volume/recovery weeks in my program, I'm now fully in taper mode so perhaps that helped; it was also my first race in my new, feels-so-light-and-fast Kinvaras.

I suspect the biggest difference is actually the reason why I've been racing as often as I can, which is just getting better at executing a race. I felt like throughout this one I was able to stay focused and as a result not allow myself to ease off in the later half of the race when the discomfort levels are getting steadily harder to ignore. My average heart rate from the race was 171, and max 183 - both of these are the highest I can remember having seen (I have suspected for a long time that I'm a low max HR person).

I had a nice little sprint finish too, I'd been slowly closing in on a guy who'd overtaken me about 1km in to the run, and managed to really put the hammer down over the last 100m to close the ~5-10m gap and just edge him out. I was beaten by a friend of mine from uni who has been doing the series barefoot! He's made rapid progress over the last month or so since he first entered, I think his times have dropped from mid 20's to high 18's. I followed him quite closely for most of the way to the turnaround, but when we hit a section where there was grass he could run on rather than pavement, he absolutely flew and left me for dead.

Song of the Day
As promised, here's the obligatory song to accompany my post. It's another NZ band - this one is a now defunct group called Push Push. The song is nearly 20 years old, with a 80's hair-metal type of sound. I hadn't heard this in a long time but it appeared on a music channel on TV recently and I was reminded of its greatness. The song is called Song 27, I'm going to embed two versions, the longer one with no video has much better audio, but I thought I'd include the version w/ video too since it's not the same without video. Enjoy!

Week of Racing!

Big week this week, ran a "5K" on Tuesday, 2km of open water drowning tomorrow, and a sprint tri on Sunday.

The 5K went well, it's the 4th open 5k I've done and I set a new PB - 19:51. Unfortunately my GPS thinks it was 4.88km, so which makes it 4:05 pace or 20:25 for a full 5k (which is still a PB). It's also the first time I've had a good battle for the finish. In the final 500m or so there was a guy and a girl within about 20m ahead of me, and a woman just behind me (had been there for about the last k and sounded like she was suffering quite a bit!). As the two people in front were for me, I think I was the target for the woman behind: she made her push and drew up beside me but I was pretty sure she was pretty much spent. I'd paced myself well and felt like I had quite a bit left and made the push for the two in front. I got past the guy first, then slowly managed to draw in and get past the girl. With around 200m to go the guy caught up again so I gave my final kick and hammered home the finish, stronger than I ever have finished, and held the guy out by a few seconds. Good stuff! This 5K is quite a cool event, it's run by a pub down on the waterfront, costs $7 to enter and you get a free pint at the end! It's held every Tuesday evening and I think I'll look to do it a lot more frequently next year. It also draws decent field - around 130 people this week, and the winners are usually around the 16 minute mark (a bit more competitive than the first two 5k's I did where the fields were larger but I came in top 5 overall!).

I've really enjoyed the last 6 weeks or so, where I've made an effort to race in some way every week. I love competing, not that I'm highly competitive at the moment but it's a great excuse to push yourself and establish some performance benchmarks. Also, as a newbie to this game, regularly competing has been a good way to generally feel more comfortable and at ease in a race, to practice my rituals and find out what works and what doesn't. The way I see it, there's effectively free time available by executing a race well, from preparation to pacing, in similar manner to how in motorsport it can be easier get faster by making your driver faster than by trying to make the vehicle faster. In this case, my mind is the driver and my body the vehicle.

The 2k OWS I'm doing tomorrow is part of a series that runs every Thursday evening during summer; they offer 500m, 1000m, 1500m and 2000m distances every night. My first proper OWS was at this event in early December, I did the 500m in preparation for my first tri which was that Sunday. Since then I've been two other times, and stepped up the distance each time. This is the last event of the summer and it seems like it would be rude to not do the 2k! Last time when I did the 1500m it was a definite struggle: for me it's mostly a mental battle as there's just nothing to distract you from the fact that you're hundreds of metres out in the harbour, swimming a distance beyond what you've done before, that you've probably got another 20 minutes of work to go before you'll be on dry land again. Compounding that, time seems to pass agonisingly slowly, you feel very alone, and it feels like you never make any progress. I guess with time, as I continue to do more swims and become more confident in my ability I'll be able to relax a bit more and just get the job done, but I'm not there yet!


Finally, I thought I'd share this. Can you tell the difference between these two garments? One is a compression singlet, the other - my jammers.

Apparently I can't, because on Monday I went to the pool, got my concession card punched, went to get changed and discovered I had apparently chosen a compression singlet as the day's swimming attire. On further consideration I decided it might be a bit risqué, and decided to abandon the swim